Here's why Hillary lost (just one more time).

[RBInMaine]

No, she didn't lose because of sexism, nor media bias, nor because MoveOn took over the caucuses, nor because she is a bad person, etc. etc. Here's why she lost:

1) Wrong Message: It was "I'm experienced" instead of "I embody change and will be force for it."

2) Wrong Assumption: It was "I'm inevitable" instead of "I have a formidable opponent and will have
to play everywhere early."

3) Wrong Financing: It was "I'll tap a few big donors" instead of "I'll get LOTS of small donors."

4) Wrong Money Management: It was "Let's overpay people and buy things we don't need" instead of
"Let's invest smartly in campaign infrastructure and organization."

5) Wrong Strategy: It was "Let's play only in the big states and wrap it up on Feb. 5th" instead of
"Let's organize EVERYWHERE including all the smaller states, red states, and
caucus states."

6) Wrong Statements: It was "Obama's Iraq policy is a joke, and Lyndon Johnson is to be given
credit over MLK for civil rights advances" instead of "MLK is a great national
hero who changed the world and I will be a powerful advocate for continuing
his legacy."

7) Wrong Campaign Team: It was "I'll go with the old school 20-state-strategy Terry McAuliffe"
instead of "I'll go with new politics people like David Axelrod".

Hillary lost because of campaign flaws. The Obama team analyzed the board better and played the campaign game better. Simple as that. And it should speak volumes as the first test of leadership.
Obama WON this campaign, beating perhaps one of the most formidable formidable machines in the history of Democratic national politics. And you ain't seen nothin' yet !

[Gore1FL]

1. I tend to agree

she brought checkers to a chess tournament and kept crying own "crown me."

[RBInMaine]

9. Yup, good analogy. Now, had the rules been different, there may have been a different outcome. i,e,

For example, if we had winner-take-all instead of a proportional system, she would most likely have won be winning the big states. And/or, if it was all primaries instead of some caucuses too, perhaps a difference. But, oh well, Team-Obama out-strategized her according to the rules and system we have now, FAIR AND SQUARE. And he did despite an anti-Obama corporate media onslaught at times and a few errors of his own. But in the big picture, point for point, he out-strategized her and beat her highly formidable political machine. Damn brilliant ! Hey, perhaps there is something to be said for being an "intellectual." Now, just wait and see how they slice and dice Team-McBush.

[Shae]

20. If the rules had been different . . .

Obama's campaign would have been different.

Now Hillary just runs around saying, "Who moved my cheese?"

[RBInMaine]

30. Yes, Obama's tactics would have been different, just throwing out the other

possibilities had the rules been different. Personally, I don't think he could have beaten her under winner take all rules because she won too many big states too soon which he couldn't win because of the tight primary schedule and his lack of name recognition. However, under the present rules, he out-played her, plain and simple.

[papau]

23. Love the mis-quotes and smears - unity because Hill supporters will crawl back? - we'll see

[RBInMaine]

32. These were paraphrases and summatios, NOT "smears." But the point remains, she LOST the GAME, and

and you and other Hillary supporters would be foolish to bemoan it and divide the party. Welcome to politics. Someone wins, someone loses. I think Hillary will exit gracefully in the end. She really has no choice. The supers are going to flood Obama on June 4th and KILL any chance of the convention floor fight. If Hillary ever tried to play that card, she knows it would destroy her legacy and standing in the party. Best to exit gracefully, heal the party, work for Obama, and accept a cabinet post. She's be great as Secretary of Education or Health and Human Services. Maybe even Attorney General or Secretary of State. Depends. BUT, anyone who sits out or otherwise help McBUSH will have the blood of American soldiers and innocent Iraqis on their hands as McCain keeps filling body bags INDEFINITELY. Plus, you'll continue to be screwed royal on domestics. So make your choice. This is MUCH bigger than you and me.

[mudesi]

2. It was arrogance, plain and simple

She was arrogant and she underestimated her opponent. It cost her.

[RBInMaine]

16. Yup, arrogant insofar as believing she could not be beaten. Reminds me of General Lee at Gettysburg

when he lost there. He thought he was invincible, that if he asked his motivated and loyal troops to take the union center they would do it. He thought he and his Army of Northern Virginia were invincible, and it was his doom ! Same can be said of Napolean. Same can be said of so many throughout history. Shakespeare put it best in Macbeth when talked about "vaulting ambition
over-reaching itself". Do that, and one becomes both arrogant and ignorant, and it all usually ends in a downfall, as we are seeing with Hillary. For her it is a personal tragedy. She is having a TOUGH time coming to grips with it. She and her team are BUMMED, BIGTIME.

[papau]

24. arrogant is the best word to describe Obama - IMO

[RBInMaine]

29. She is ON RECORD saying "It will be over on Feb. 5th." And she was WRONG. So you tell me, which one

was the "arrogant" one?? Obama NEVER made such a statement. Look, I know Hillary and her supporters feel bad. They also did some smart things, and she is one TOUGH candidate. I honestly admire her fighting spirit. BUT, facts are facts, and she BLUNDERED across too many dimensions in the first half of the primary season, plain and simple. Now what she needs to do is make peace with Obama and party, be very graceful, and work hard to heal the party and work for the Dem ticket.

[mudesi]

31. That's because you are a deluded Clinton loyalist (nm)

[tledford]

Translation: "Obama is an uppity n****r."

I've lived all my life as a (52 years old today) Southern white man -- I know it when I hear it, even if it is euphemized.

[rebel with a cause]

38. You mean you understand

"white speak". Do you understand this easy one. Jose here is my friend, he is one of the "good ones". ;)

[rebel with a cause]

37. a little arrogance is good in politics

you need it to withstand the arrows thrown at you. It is when you become overly arrogant that a hot wind causes you to fall apart for your backers to put back together.

Obama's rule for his campaign is "no drama". With Hillary it has been nothing but drama.

[WillyT]

41. Don't You Mean Uppity ???

:wtf:

[ForeignSpectator]

44. Here is some hillary arrogance for you...

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V47-HRJUxmM

[DerekJ]

3. Nominated.

[havocmom]

4. .

marking for later.

[rainbow4321]

5. Summed up very nicely!!

Not that she will ever admit to any of those.

But I can see some people in her camp writing memoirs long after-the-fact admitting all these points and putting the blame where it belongs...in her lap.

[RBInMaine]

33. Actually, several of these points have been made by others already.

[kid a]

6. I agree...but, now the REAL work begins for the GE. Tough times ahead, but will will prevail!

K & R

[cliss]

7. Good points RB

and I agree with you.

Politics = Darwinism at its Finest.

[MadMaddie]

8. RBInMaine you have nailed pretty much everthing...

The one I would add

8. Hillary misplayed her "I am a Women" card....she could have strategically used it in this campaign..instead of "I am entitled because it's a womans turn"...(I am not saying that is what she said, that is the impression I get)

[KansasVoter]

10. She was "Owed" this according to her. What an arrogant woman she is. Ha Ha!

[Cha]

11. I knew this would good, RBMaine! YOu've

described the winner in one fell swoop explaining why hilary lost.

It doesn't get better than that.

[KSinTX]

12. Hey, have you heard about this guy named McCain?

Why has he lost 20-percent of the Republican vote in every contest (except OR) since becoming the presumptive nominee of his party? Why can't he close the deal?

[Liberal Veteran]

13. #8...Wrong attitude

It was "Everyone is picking on me for my own screw-ups and noticing how ungracious I am at admitting my mistakes." instead of "I can take criticism and run a strong campaign, but I won't get down into the mud".

[Yael]

18. Summed up my thoughts better than I did.

Well done!

[RBInMaine]

21. Going kitchen sink didn't help much in the end, BUT it really probably didn't hurt her much either

because by the time she went kitchen sink, just before OH and TX, the demographics were pretty much set. Her tactical errors which cost her this election were mainly prior to OH and TX, but those blunders caused her to lose those 11 in a row, and that just sunk her for the long term. Sadly, since then, her negativity HAS served to deepen the emotional divides in the party which will mean she'll need to do more work to help heal it for the GE, but this is why I left this one out here.
Her negativity really wasn't a key causal factor in her losing this primary election, although I entirely agree it was pretty sad she felt she had to do it, and it has certainly cost her some favor with a lot of Obama supporters. But for the sake of the party and the GE, we need to kiss and make up with her, and I actually think she'll be gracious in the end. She's just in emtional paid now and is trying to both come to grips with the loss, her failures in causing it, and how she can exit gracefully and with her legacy and future well intact. Personally, I think if she goes BIGTIME POSITIVE and leaves very gracefully she should receive strong cabinet post signals, and Bill a major role as an honorary foreign emissary in the Obama administration.

[madeline_con]

14. OR...

maybe more Dems like Obama for this. :popcorn:

[TBF]

15. Thank you for tossing the crap aside to get to the meat of the argument.

It doesn't matter how Hillary tries to spin it now, or change the rules after the fact. She lost the old fashioned way - she earned it with her mistakes.

[Yael]

17. Well done!!!

I would only add the bipolar, emotionally manipulative, passive aggressive stance of being a "Leader who is strong while being a martyr who is really a victim".

I know this female has been turned off by that Clintonian tactic for 15 years now. Likely others as well.

[Underscoring facts]

19. Who is claiming she lost because of sexism?

Nobody. Name one person in the Hillary camp who is claiming such thing.

They simply have pointed out that sexism is there.

[RBInMaine]

22. Both she, Bill, and others have strongly implied this as one FACTOR. Research it.

But, the main point I was making is that she lost because of campaign management errors, not any of these other reasons that either she or others are asserting.

[Muttocracy]

43. the disruptor is gone.

[Smarmie Doofus]

25. She lost because she does not share the consensus....

... world view of the DEM party primary electorate. Alas, she is closer to the catastrophic philosophy and failed foreign policy of the other party. ( IWR, Kyl-Lieberman,"obliterate" etc.)

The other stuff is... relatively speaking.... inconsequential.

[RBInMaine]

27. Campaigns are mainly won and lost on CONCRETE TACTICS, not such abstractions.

She lost because of flawed strategy and campaign mismanagement. That's the rubber-on-the-road reality of this.

[Bensthename]

26. She would have won

if Obama was not the better candidate and campaigner.

[RBInMaine]

28. Excellent summation !

[Cosmocat]

46. THAT is my point, with one mitigating factor ...

That has been a point I have made all along, that if it wasn't for BO, she WOULD be the nominee by now ...

Someone posted something in a string I started along those lines and I have mulled it over, and I would say this ...

ONE thing would have rewrote history for her ... The Iraq Resolution vote ...

She made a strictly political decision, played the odds that we would just kick Saddam's rear end and that would be that ... AND, did not want to deal with her being painted as weak on security in this election after a major butt kicking, and instead of doing the right thing and voting against it, she voted for herself ...

IMO, had she voted against the Iraq resolution, she would have won this with or without BO in the race ...

[kid a]

34. You get a Kick, a Rec, AND a Star for this!!!

!!!

[quaker bill]

35. Barack Obama

Picked a better strategy, picked a better message, picked a better staff, and ran a better campaign.

However, there is only one explanation for why any of this worked. Hillary was vulnerable in exactly the same way that John Kerry was. She was for the war before she was against it.

This citical issue limited her appeal to a number slightly less than half of the party. Once the primary devolved into a two candidate race, she was going to lose.

If you look at Hillary's trend line in a compilation of national polls, she peaked at 46 to 47 percent sometime late last year, and only recently have her numbers started to fall off a bit. This race has only been "close" when Barack's numbers slid toward 46 to 47 percent, like during the Wright weeks.

For Hillary to have won, she needed a multi-candidate race to extend well into February. Thus Bill Clinton's complaint about Barack's campaign ending the runs of "several good candidates" in Feb. Bottom line is that he knew then that Hillary needed the progressive vote split between several candidates, like it was in 2004.

Once the field cleared out, Barack had a ceiling of about 53 percent nationwide, (obviously more in some states, and just as obviously less in West Virginia).

While Hillary's campaign has been run so poorly as to border on criminal negligence (never has so much money been spent to run in so few states and achieve second place results), her biggest mistake and the critical one, happened in 2002.

While she did underestimate Barack Obama, and did her best to dismiss him out of hand, her biggest failing was her underestimation of the wanton violence and sheer stupidity of the Bush Administration. This is what did her in. It is the reason why a candidate with a quarter of a billion dollars to spend and 100 percent name recognition could not sustainably crack 47 percent nationally.

[Smarmie Doofus]

36. To the point and *right* on the money.

>>>>However, there is only one explanation for why any of this worked. Hillary was vulnerable in exactly the same way that John Kerry was. She was for the war before she was against it.

This citical issue limited her appeal to a number slightly less than half of the party. Once the primary devolved into a two candidate race, she was going to lose.>>>>

[Prophet 451]

39. 8) Couldn't adapt quickly enough

The Clinton campaign assumed that Obama would be a trifling irritation and struggled to adapt when he proved to have legs.

9) Went negative. Horrendously bad idea in a single party primary campaign.

[Utopian Leftist]

40. Note her latest meme

that people have been calling for her to exit since Iowa. BULLSHIT! Maybe one or two idiots might have said something like that at that time, but the tide of public opinion didn't even begin to turn against her until after Super Tuesday. And had she TRULY been concerned about getting a Democrat elected, she would have dropped out long ago.

[QueenOfCalifornia]

42. You left out some important things

Like for one, she is a fucking liar.

I mean she is pathological.

[Nedsdag]

45. BULLSEYE!

n/t